


Lessons in Loving

by boksoongah



Category: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)
Genre: F/F, anyways don't read if you don't like homoerotic undertones to the amilyn/leia relationship, possibly gay, we'll have to see
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 03:01:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13021857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boksoongah/pseuds/boksoongah
Summary: After everything Leia has learned during her time with Amilyn Holdo, if there is one lesson she's remembered, it's this: the people who love you will never truly leave.





	Lessons in Loving

\- Lesson 1: Nothing comes in absolutes.

The first time Leia Organa meets Amilyn Holdo, she has to wonder what the opposite of being in love is, because whatever that is, she's certain she's feeling it right now.

Amilyn is strange. Leia can't wrap her head around the green hair. She can't get her obsession with finding snow owls. She most definitely would have thought that using her emergency tent to carry Harp, the injured member of their apprentice Pathfinders' party, would be a last resort.

"We could have died," Kier points out for the tenth time.

Leia agrees heartily. But Amilyn, who sips her cup of mocoa as calmly as if Harp didn't nearly cause them all to tumble head-over-heels to their deaths during that risky tent-turned-tobaggan run, merely smiles and shakes a strand of emerald hair from her eyes.

"Mortal peril is good for your health," is all she says.

Leia thinks back to her father's stories of the days of the Separatist wars. Worlds burned, he said, and lives destroyed, in the blink of an eye, hundreds, thousands, millions, untold myriads of souls, each with their own unique stories of love and fear and pain and defiance, each of whom did not know they would die until the moment they were dead. Mortal peril could be found in abundance then, Leia thinks, and she wonders if this girl with the green hair would still be saying these things if she had been there to see it.

Kier blinks slowly.

"You're saying that death is good," he says.

Amilyn sets down her mocoa primly.

"Are you saying it's bad?" she says.

Has she gone mad? Leia wonders.

Kier raises one eyebrow.

"Tell me it isn't," he says, and Leia agrees entirely with the way he looks at her, smiling a little, frowning a little, waiting for her to realize her own mistake.

"The way I see it," Amilyn says, unruffled, "death is a part of life. It's not good. It's not bad. It's just there. And we wouldn't appreciate life as much without it." She settles back and the firelight from the hearth they're sitting around catches her hair, lights it up a brilliant lime green that makes Leia think of the jewel-bright drinks they serve at the palace, when important beings from across the galaxy come to meet and negotiate with her father, where soon they'll be negotiating with her instead. "If I'm going to serve my planet," says Amilyn, "if I'm going to serve my people - I want to be ready. I want to be able to accept it, when it comes. I should make peace with the inevitable if I'm going to be a peacemaker when I'm older, don't you think?"

She looks at Kier, who can only gape in response.

Honestly, Leia can't blame him. What would she say, either? That this girl is, indeed, clearly mad? That somehow Leia can't believe she's actually got a point? But Leia can't reconcile this grandiose philosophizing with Harp, who lay in the snow and gasped in pain over her ankle earlier, at risk of dying. She can't make sense of this principle when her friend could have died. Perhaps that's what makes her realize she's actually angry at Amilyn for being so strange, so calm, over all of this. Or perhaps it's just that outrageous green dye job.

Leia stands. Foam from her cup of mocoa froths over the edge, onto her hand, and spills onto the floor. There's snow in her jacket and her hair is still a mess. She looks nothing like the future queen of Alderaan right now. She doesn't care.

"How does that make Harp's accident a good thing?" she blurts out.

Amilyn has looked at her before - when they first met for Pathfinding training, when she suggested using her tent for a tobaggan earlier - but this time, it's like she actually sees Leia for the first time. It's jarring. Leia realizes just how pale and uncannily blue this strange girl's eyes are, and their gazes meet and something shocks inside of Leia, momentarily breaking her from her thoughts, and then her frustration comes back in full force and she snaps her mouth shut.

She expects Amilyn to say something in response, but instead, after a very long moment, the girl says, "You're Bail Organa's daughter."

This is the most annoying thing she's said.

"Yes," says Leia. "You knew that. You've known it since we met. What does it have to do with anything?"

Amilyn's eyes are wide and full of something soft, and Leia hates it. She knows Gatalentan culture teaches love and compassion above all else, but they're in the middle of an argument; doesn't this girl have the decency to at least show a little enthusiasm about it? What happened to confidence? Zeal? But no. She's smiling now. She's actually smiling.

Kriff, Leia hates this girl.

"He fought in the war," Amilyn says. "So he knows what death is like."

Leia fights the urge to grit her teeth.

"Yes," she says. "He knows how horrible it is. To lose comrades. Subordinates. Friends. He knows what death is like, and he knows that it's bad."

"No," says Amilyn, and she's still smiling, and her voice is eager. "That's just it. Don't you understand? The deaths of those we love come as sorrows to us, and I'm sure he grieved for them. But he also remembered the good that had come from knowing them. And if they died fighting as heroes, he knows their deaths were sacrifices - so others could live. There's good in death sometimes, Leia. There's sadness too, but it all balances - it's all part of the balance of our universe. Love and pain, life and death. Don't you see?"

Leia can't believe she's actually hearing this.

"Harp's death would have done no good at all," she says roughly, and sets her mocoa down with a clink. There's a buzzing in her head that's most unbecoming of Alderaan's future queen. If she keeps talking with her like this, she'll lose her temper and say something wrong; she can't let that happen. She needs to be away. To think.

"Leia," says Kier, and she knows he's going to try and talk her out of leaving, to put a hand on her arm and comfort her until she isn't so furious with this grass-haired idiot of a girl. But not now. She won't let him. One day, he might not be there to talk her out of things, and then what will she do? As a queen, she must stand entirely on her own. No. She will deal with this on her own, and then she will confront the Holdo girl later and set her straight about these things.

She knows that going to her father will be just as bad. Worse. As she hurries out, she promises herself it is not because she fears, secretly, that Bail agrees with this girl, somehow, about the people he loved, and watched die, over the course of the war. No, this is merely a matter of wanting to be home again, with people she knows and loves. People she's missed for far too long.

But in the hallway, she lets out a sigh and stops. She can't run from this. Not only because the chalet where they're resting is only so large.

When she hears footsteps, she expects it to be Kier, or maybe Harp, even, somehow dragging her broken ankle behind her well enough that Leia cannot notice the unevenness of her gait. She hopes it will be. But no. It's Amilyn.

Leia turns, and it takes all her willpower not to let the diplomat's smile she's plastered on her face turn to a grimace.

If her anger shows, Amilyn is unfazed. She takes two more steps and stops, an arm's length away, far enough that Leia feels silently frustrated that she cannot hit the girl, close enough to make her wary. Her arms are folded, and her gaze is guarded, but she isn't angry. Nor afraid.

"You're angry at me," Amilyn says.

Despite herself, Leia allows her smile to turn bitter.

"What gave it away?" she quips, and though she means it to be joking, it comes out grating, even to her ears, instead.

Amilyn nods at her. "Your jaw," she says. "It's tight. You're doing a good job controlling your emotions, though."

Leia snorts, but says nothing.

"You know," says Amilyn, "you'd make a good Jedi knight. You do know what those are, don't you?"

Leia thinks briefly of her father's stories, from the days of the war. She says, "They're all dead now."

Amilyn's smile turns soft for a moment. "Yes," she says. "And they still did good for the world, didn't they? Their deaths were not for nothing."

Their deaths came too soon to stop what has come now, Leia thinks.

After a moment, Amilyn's smile disappears. She drops her gaze.

"Look," she says. "If I've angered you, Princess, then I'm sorry. I don't mean to disrespect your father, or what he's been through. Senator Organa is a brave man, and I admire what he does."

Leia hardly feels like it's a genuine apology after what Amilyn has said, but she nods anyway. Even a queen, she supposes, has to put up with bantha fodder from time to time if she's to be a proper diplomat.

Amilyn raises her head. In the dim light of the corridor, her eyes shine nearly silver.

"I'm doing my best," she says. "To make sense of all this. I can't let myself be burdened by fear when I'm faced with the possibility of death. I can't let myself grieve too long when it's already happened."

She pauses, and despite her anger, Leia finds herself genuinely curious what she's going to say.

"I had a sister once," Amilyn says. Her voice is soft. "She was born on Gatalenta. She died there. Her last wish was to see what lay beyond our star system."

She looks at Leia. Leia can see how hard it is for her to meet her gaze.

"She told me," says Amilyn, "she wanted to explore. Everything. So now I am. Through her. For her, because she never got the chance."

She raises a hand and runs her fingers through those strange brilliantly green locks, remembering.

"That's why I dyed my hair," she says, and looks back at Leia, and for the first time, there's something akin to sadness in her expression. "Ashi said she hated how...drab everyone looks on Gatalenta. How our only color, besides the color of nature, is red. She said she loved the color of green, growing things. She said she wanted to explore every planet that had them. That's why I came here. To Alderaan."

Leia is speechless.

"I was sad when she passed away," Amilyn says. "Isn't everyone? But I finally got the courage to leave Gatalenta, to see the galaxy for myself, when she died. I'd been a coward before then. She made me realize what a fool I was being. And when I didn't have her to stay for any more..."

She looks at Leia, and Leia realizes she's waiting for her to respond. To tell her how stupid this sounds. And Leia should. But somehow, strangely, beneath all her anger, there's something else. She's still frustrated. She still doesn't like her, this Amilyn, this girl who she doesn't understand. But it's not just that.

Surprising even herself, Leia says instead, "I understand. I'm sorry."

After a moment, Amilyn smiles.

"Maybe not everything has to be black and white," she says. "I'm sorry, too."

She extends her hand. After a moment of hesitation - after all, Leia thinks, she does still hate this girl - she reaches out and takes it. Queens have to put up with Kowakian monkey-lizard farts from time to time, too, she reminds herself. But there is something unexpectedly nice about holding her hand. Something solid. She looks up in confusion and sees that Amilyn is still smiling.

"Making peace means accepting the universe as it is, Princess," she says. "If I'm doing that wrongly, please correct me."

Leia wants to tell her she is doing it wrongly. She wants to. But something in her hesitates now to argue. She doesn't understand it, and it scares her. But maybe that's all right. After all, didn't seeing Harp break her ankle earlier today scare her, too?

After a moment, Amilyn shrugs and lets go of her hand.

"Chassellon and his group should be back soon," she says. "Do you want to go back and philosophize more in the meantime?"

Leia thinks it's odd that she wants to say yes. A moment ago, she hated even the thought of talking any longer with this girl. Perhaps, she wonders as they return to Kier, and the light and warmth of the hearth, the Jedi, with their mind tricks, are not dead after all. Nothing else, she is sure, could have changed her mind - or her heart - so fast.

Later it will occur to her something else her father told her from the days when the Jedi still walked among the stars. Only the Sith deal in absolutes, he says, something an old, old master of the ways of the Force once told him in turn, long ago.

At the beginning of this trip, Leia felt certain she felt the opposite of love for this girl. But perhaps opposites are not so distinct after all.

In any case, she supposes, she will soon find out.

**Author's Note:**

> Have I read Leia: A Princess of Alderaan? Nope! Do I have any idea what's going on here, beyond what I could glean off the sadly limited articles posted to Wookieepedia? No siree. That said, there's very little known in general at this point about either Amilyn Holdo, or her relationship with Princess Leia, before or after the Battle of Yavin. Please bear with me here, and assume we're filling in the lines between what's actually been established as canon so far.
> 
> As you can probably guess, I've just come from a showing of The Last Jedi (there was an advance screening here in the Hollywood area - me and my friends got lucky!) and my feelings about Admiral Holdo and her possible relations with Princess Leia are pretty conflicted. I think it goes without saying, for anyone who's read the novel or watched the movie, that Admiral Holdo is pretty awesome, and I love her. I think it's definite that she and the good Princess had a very close, affectionate relationship with each other. Personally, I think there's potential for both a sisterly interpretation of their feelings for each other, and the possibility that they may have been more - perhaps lovers at some point (see the longing way Leia looks at Admiral Holdo when they part, and in other scenes of the movie, without giving too much away) - and, as a gay person myself, I think that's a really cool idea (especially how heteronormative the Star Wars universe has been given to be thus far, ughh). Most of all, I respect their relationship and their closeness and I want to show their love for each other, platonic or otherwise, through this series of vignettes inspired by their sadly brief interactions over the course of the movie, and my inevitable question: What were things like for them in between, before Leia knew Han - or in the period after, when they were broken up? I want to know what Leia's life is like when none of the leading men are in it; I want to see what her interactions with another powerful, headstrong, impossibly loyal and intelligent and dedicated woman would be like. If things end up turning a little romantic between them, I'm not afraid to go there. That said, if I do anything here that goes overboard, please don't hesitate to let me know. Any and all feedback is welcomed with open arms (and perhaps not a little desperation, seeing as I'm not expecting this fic to get all that much love)! :D
> 
> Thank you for reading and I hope you've enjoyed!


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